Big Ideas? Or Does James May Just Have Well-Trained Ears?

Flicking through freeview this evening, I stumbled across an episode of James May's Big Ideas. As the show gradually harnessed my ever-wavering concentration, May's confrontation with a hi-tech robot, capable of learning new words and making simple judgements, led him to ask if artificial intelligence would ever be capable of creativity.

To test this, he played two pieces of classical music on piano. One written by world-famous composer Ludwig Van Beethoven, the other produced by a computer, but in the style of the German symphonist.

May's argument was that the computer-penned piece was not "creative" as it had imitated previous patterns, randomly regenerating them to form a new score, whereas the real Beethoven piece contained emotion to which we can relate - to me however, both pieces sounded on a par (with the generated piece edging it in my opinion).

This got me to thinking, is there really emotion in music itself, or is it more to do with the emotion that we as individuals attach to it?

For instance, I know that Beethoven's most famous works were created in spite of his deafness, a remarkable achievement, instantly making the music more impressive to my untrained ears.

Again, fans of any musician who was brought up into poverty, has overcome illness or dealt with massive bereavement probably hang to his or her every word, whereas those unaware of the background story may listen and continue unaffected.

In fact, if you told me that James May's computer-generated symphony had been written by a blind 16-year-old boy as his father uttered his dying words beside him in the family home, then I would probably be fooled into finding the piece very emotive.

Maybe this is the future of pop music? Artifically produced music with a false background story to give it human interest. Maybe it's the present and we just don't know it.

Either way, having turned my mind inside out over-thinking the situation, I'm coming to conclusion that James May only included the segment on his programme to show that not only does he have an obscene knowledge of motor cars, a job to die for and a full head of hair, but he can also play the bloody piano.